#figurehead child emperor hunter au

[edoro]

so as per usual i saw people talking about a concept, pulled a face, then started thinking, “okay, but could that actually work?”, so here’s my personal take on how Hunter Killing Belos could actually work

so. imagine this. somehow, Hunter finds out about the draining spell/genocide plans on his own. it’s pre-Hollow Mind, that never ends up happening, so Belos doesn’t know he knows, and therefore his own life is not in immediate danger and he doesn’t have to run away.

instead, he’s just going about his regular daily life in the castle. attending to his duties as Golden Guard. assisting the Emperor, who he now knows is planning to murder the entire population of the Isles in at most a couple of months, and whose regime Hunter himself has personally helped prop up and legitimize.

now the thing about Hunter is that he thought he was doing something good. like everyone else, he sincerely believed the propaganda - he believed that Belos spoke to the Titan and carried out the Titan’s will, that he himself had some kind of divinely appointed grand destiny that he was working towards fulfilling, that the Isles were going to be ushered into paradise on the Day of Unity, that everything Belos did was for the good of the people.

he’s a deeply moral person with a strong sense of justice, imo, whose idea of what morality or justice or goodness is has been intensely warped by being raised by Emperor “Philip ‘lying serial killer’ Wittebane” Belos and handfed a steady diet of propaganda and manipulation for his entire life.

so. he has a choice. he can either let Belos hurt people, let Belos literally kill everyone on the Isles... or he can do something about it.

as far as he knows, he’s the only person who knows. as far as he knows, he’s the only person who can do anything about it.

on the one hand, there’s Belos. his uncle, the man who raised him, his only family, a man who he absolutely adores, a man he worships, a man who he has dedicated his entire life to serving. on the other hand, there’s literally every single living person in the entire Isles.

that’s not an easy choice for Hunter, not at all, but it’s a very simple one. he can’t let his uncle go through with it. but what’s he supposed to do? he can’t talk Belos out of it. there’s no act of sabotage he could commit that would sufficiently derail the Day of Unity. he’s just one person, albeit a very highly-ranked one.

no, the only real advantage he has is that he has unparalleled intimate access to the Emperor. to his uncle.

so... he uses that. he makes a plan. (he stops sleeping, he stops eating, he throws himself into his work, he does his best to keep up appearances, his stomach is eating itself and he feels so sick all of the time.) he gets Belos alone. it’s harder to do now than when he was younger, but he still finds himself alone with Belos in his workshop, in his personal chambers, away from anyone else, plenty often.

and he assassinates the Emperor.

he hopes to die in the attempt. failing that, he’s sure that he’ll be executed afterwards, and he’ll happily stand on the stage to be petrified without ever breathing a word of what he found out. no one else needs to know what Belos was planning. let them revile him, let his memory be dragged through the mud, let him be known forever as a traitor who took paradise away from them. that’s fine.

he doesn’t die, though! and, worse - he’s not the only person who knew. there were rebels at the highest levels who were trying to work to stop Belos themselves, and he got the jump on them and now they’re scrambling to get on top of this situation.

and now i invite you to consider... Raine Whispers, who has a ruthlessly practical streak a mile wide, who was absolutely willing to die and kill for the sake of toppling this dictator even before they knew he was planning genocide. who, as a performer, understands the value of propaganda.

(and Darius, who, as a theatrical bitch and someone who did an even better job of flying under the radar than Raine, also understands the value of putting on a good show. and cares about Hunter, too, although he’s never felt like it was safe enough to admit that to anyone, least of all Hunter.)

consider the two of them looking at the problem in front of them: they have a beheaded imperium staggering around about to collapse, a society full of witches and demons who have no idea what Hunter just did for them, and one extremely guilty suicidal teenage boy who just saved everyone’s lives and is ready to go to his grave without ever saying so because it meant betraying and murdering the man who raised him.

and consider them, practical, crafty, bastardous, going: “i think i know how to kill both of these birds with one stone here.”

and leaping to craft and push this whole narrative where the noble Golden Guard was ready and willing to sacrifice his own life to save the people of the Isles after learning of the Emperor’s true goals, so who better to take the Emperor’s place? with, of course, the support and advice of the ruling council of the coven heads, who truly knew nothing of what Belos intended.

(none of them like or respect Hunter. none of them trust or particularly like Raine, either. they probably largely don’t like Darius, but his loyalty and dedication is unimpeachable. he’ll talk them around. they all want power, right? well here it is - the boy can’t rule, he’s a trained dog stuffed into royal vestments, he’s a kid, he’ll need guidance, do you see what he’s saying?)

they save Hunter by making him a figurehead. now everyone knows the truth - although how long it’s going to take for everyone to accept that truth is another matter entirely - now the covens have a banner to rally under, now there’s a sense of continuity and society has been shaken without collapsing entirely, so Raine and Darius and Eberwolf can go on making changes and bringing about the government they want to have without completely tearing it down and starting all over again.

(Raine is worried about him. this is a lot for a kid to deal with, and he’s obviously troubled. but it’s the best thing for the greatest number of people, and it’s only until they can hammer out something better.)

(Darius is so proud of him - a secret palisman and sneaking out to make friends is one thing, but this? if he’d known Hunter had this kind of rebellion in him, he might’ve brought the kid into his confidence a lot earlier. he wishes they’d been able to coordinate, because sweet Titan is this a grade-A clusterfuck of a mess, but he can’t bring himself to regret not telling the Emperor’s loyal right-hand boy man about the treason he was planning.)

(and Hunter? well. Hunter has A Job To Do, so he can’t throw himself into the spike moat, no matter how miserable he is.)

[confusedhost-archive]

Okay time to elaborate on the Wild Witch Lilith au bc its actually a lot more than her being. You know: a wild witch

So while Lilith’s running away is the CAUSE of these changes, Raine and Hunter are both more prominent in this as well.

Lilith messed up and was going to be petrified, but got out before they could even announce it. She becomes a wild witch but keeps in contact with Raine Whispers, a school friend, as well as one child in the Emperor’s coven: Hunter, the golden guard.

She leaves hunter a note that directs him to Raine and the two of them learn to get along (after, of course, it’s explained that Lilith allegedly left him a note. Even then, Hunter is suspicious. He didn’t know Lilith further than a nod or possibly a shared mission. But she expressed worry for him, so after a lot of time, he decided to - hesitantly - take her up on her offer to meet a friend. It will take him a while to trust them truly.)

More in a storytelling form under the cut

It’s about two months later that Lilith manages to catch Hunter at Raine’s house. She comes in through the back door and is searching lazily through her bag for the spices she apparently promised last time she intruded. Seeing Hunter makes her falter. “Ah, the golden guard.” While she doesn’t seem particularly excited, she certainly doesn’t sound upset.

Raine looks confused. “Was he not the one you gave the letter to?” 

“Oh no, he is.” Lilith says, still standing by the door. “I just didn’t particularly expect to ever really... see him.” Now she moves to the table where they’re sitting and seats herself in one of the chairs. “You won’t hand me over to the emperor, will you?”

Hunter shakes his head.

Raine elbows Lilith in the arm. “Never expected to see him? Don’t tell me you were planning on leaving me to take care of a kid alone every other Saturday?”

Any stress that Lilith may have had drains from her as she laughs. “Is that when I should have been dropping by? Our friday date nights don’t work for you?” Raine laughs too, and Hunter doesn’t recognize the atmosphere. It’s calm, and it’s teasing, and it’s nice. He comes back more often.

(Lilith and Raine talk a few weeks later, Hunter having come and left for the day. Raine raises a brow over their glass of cider and asks if this means they have both have custody over a child. Lilith laughs. She says that, well, maybe they do.

Raine leans back in their chair. “However will we assure we won’t fall in love?”

Lilith rolls her eyes fondly. “Easy. I think you’re stupid.” She’s teasing and they know it.

“That’s a bold move against a teacher, Clawthorne.” Then, in retaliation: “Well, it’s good I think you’re annoying, then.” They’re teasing too.

A pause after their laughter has subsided. Then, and Raine asks this one too, “Wait- are we sharing custody with the Emperor?”

Lilith makes a choking sound over her glass of water, and then, a dribble of water coming from the corner of her mouth, says, “I can promise you I won’t fall in love with him.”

Raine raises their glass with a mock solemnity. “Cheers to that.” Their cups clink together.)

Lilith and Raine are there for Hunter. They’re there for when he’s hurt and there for when he’s happy. Raine is a wonderful teacher and Lilith is happy to show the magic that they can’t supply.

(Hunter has no magic and can’t use what the two of them teach him, but Lilith, out of all of them, is the closest to having the ability to use wild magic. Wild magic is the ability to mix magic as one pleases, and it’s with great annoyance that she finds she can’t do that. “I thought the emperor’s coven was the only coven where witches don’t get their magic restrained!” She complains, later.)

Hunter learns how to play instruments, and Lilith enjoys attempting the xylophone, when Raine chooses to bring one home.

(She enjoys the simplicity and the sound, she says. Raine steals the mallets from her and produces two more, playing a quick song with the mallets pressed between their fingers. “Is it simple now, Clawthorne?” They ask, and turn around to their awed audience. There’s a sudden realization that they have a two person crowd watching, and with a flushed face, they call off the rest of the day’s music lessons.)

Hunter enjoys the guitar and clarinet, they find. The piano is an old friend to him, and he’s happy to play it mindlessly when he has nothing else to do.

(He plays it the day Raine first finds him with a bandage on his face. They can’t convince him to take it off, but he wears it for a month. There’s a scar on his face after the bandaid is gone. He doesn’t say anything about it and Raine doesn’t press. There was something sad about his song on the day Raine found him playing.)

Raine and hunter convince Lilith to dye her hair a light blue grey (They requested white, to match with their general scheme, but she refused.) and Lilith gets Raine to add a gem to their outfit. Hunter can’t get anything permanent, but both adults enjoy playing with his hair while he’s with them.

Lilith and Raine have cared for Hunter for two years now. Raine’s been climbing up the ranks, and while Hunter is away, (Hunter is a good kid, but he feels an obligation to his uncle. Neither adult knows what to do about it. All they can do is give him as safe a space they can.) they talk about ways to mess up any plans Belos may have. On a late night, Raine admits that Eda (the name is spoken with mixed feelings. Neither saw her last under good circumstances.) was the cause of their drive to do something about the terribleness of the coven system. Lilith says nothing.

She lives more at Raine’s house now. Sleeping on the couch after helping them with a plan, then leaving if there’s ever a knock on anything but a window (Hunter refuses to come in through a door) to keep from the possibility of them getting arrested for holding a criminal in their home. Wandering the city never ceases to be nerve wracking, even with the difference in her appearance.

She was only at the convention to cheer on Hunter. While his place as the mystery guest unnerved both her and Raine (He was only sixteen. Taking place as figurehead of the coven was too much.) he seemed excited, so they congratulated him, and Lilith confronted the terrifying possibility of being recognized to go clap for his performance.

She was recognized. Somehow, her sister spotted her (Was she not also a wild witch? She hated covens, and really, Lilith saw no reason for her to be at such a convention.) and asked about her disappearance. Lilith rolled her eyes and dusted off every question, interrupted only by a human child asking for Eda’s help.

“I’ll leave you to it then,” Lilith said, and walked off. Her sister’s “I’m not done with you!” Only made her chuckle as she searched for Hunter in the crowd.

Lilith attempted to leave a long while later. Apparently the place where the human’s witch’s duel had taken place was broken rather severely. She’d stuck around only long enough to see that most spectators were gone, and she watched both the young Blight and the human storm out of the door before Edalyn pointed up at her.

“HEY LILITH!” Eda called. “I WANT TO TALK!”

Lilith narrowed her eyes and called up magic. “WELL I DON’T!” She yelled back.

That was how Lilith ended up in Raine’s house, bruised and annoyed. Lilith refused to admit how she ended up hurt, tight lipped as she healed herself and avoided eye contact with the equally amused and concerned bard on the sofa.

The next time Lilith saw Eda was after making a bet with Raine. Lilith was terrible with alcohol, honestly, and it didn’t get much wine to get her talking smack. It was a blurry memory, but all she knew is that she needed to get some sort of powerful artifact, to prove... something to Raine.

A flower of youth sounded good. She gained a map, and with a small offhand comment about what her sister must look like now (She’d seen posters, and a younger Eda’s hair was growing white already). She was doing perfectly fine on her own, but somehow, for some reason, her sister had decided to tag along. Which was fine! They were bonding a bit, really. Especially after the blood sucker (emphasis on sucker. Little bitch.) started trying to scare them. Cute, but the sisters were mean when they wanted to be, and oh, did Lilith want to be.

She lost the bet, but she saw her sister again. Under better circumstances (though only barely) and without a fight. She could call that a win.

It happened again (Not a clue how she got roped into a grudgby match, but it was fun while it lasted.) and again (Eda finally getting caught on account of that little human she found was terribly tragic.) and again (also getting caught after accidentally slipping to the human that she’d caused Eda’s curse was more than a little embarrassing.)

She wanted to say sorry. She didn’t think it was enough.

Eda was understandably upset.

Lilith didn’t have a proper cure. She’d been looking for one for a while now, but even any knowledge about the curse she’d used was gone. All she had to make up for it all was her backup plan.

“With this spell declared, let the pain be shared.”

[edoro]

thinking about figurehead child emperor Hunter au and the like, political factions that develop following Belos’s death

Kikimora, of course, is a big player. she’s been around for a while and she knows everything, she’s got her fingers in allllllll the imperial pies and has been making sure to turn allllllll the imperial irons in the imperial fires, and when she determines which way the wind is blowing she jumps at the chance to ingratiate herself while grabbing for more power

Raine, Darius, and Eberwolf just kind of have to grin and bear her, because she’s on top of a ton of logistics and organizational tasks that, ideological displays or not, need to keep happening or else things are gonna start getting hairy

and she can back up their wild claims about how actually the Emperor was planning to murder everyone and the Golden Guard risked his life and reputation to save the people of the Isles - and conversely, if they don’t keep her happy and secure her support, she could pretty plausibly start a civil war about it

i think her faction are going to be the people who support Belos’s vision and the current imperium and its policies without necessarily being too torn up about Belos himself being gone - moderates who believe in the Titan religion and the coven system and think everything is more or less fine, might be willing to change and update some stuff, but are fine with the authoritarian regime as long as they’re the ones wearing the jackboots

i think the real loyalists would coalesce around Terra, though. she strikes me as a deep-down true believer, a member of the original cohort who remembers the bad old days with fondness. those’ll be the conservative zealots who think kids these days are disrespecting the Titan with their multi-tracking and their Penstagrams and their scandalously short tunic skirts, and what society really needs is more petrifications

meanwhile Darius, Raine, and Eberwolf are trying to turn the Isles into some kind of democracy while also keeping it from just falling apart into dozens of different settlements and groups with their own governments and agendas all at cross-purposes

which first of all is going to involve a lot of taking stock and figuring out just what the state of various settlements and cities is, then figuring out the best way to go about districting and dividing citizens up, how to elect or appoint leaders, how to ensure cooperation and continuity of infrastructure, etc...

and tbh since Philip was planning to just kill the place i can’t imagine he spent a lot of time maintaining infrastructure to begin with? he was not interested in a well-kept, well-educated populace, he was interested in subjugated brainwashed theocratic drones who would follow him to their deaths, so a certain amount of good works and efficiency was necessary to keep people from getting to the point of rioting, but i’m sure he had his bare minimum classifications and his priorities there

so they’ve got infrastructure to deal with, taxes, overhauling the entire coven system, endless dickering over laws and regulations, the whole educational system, the matter of dealing with the prisoners in the Conformatorium depending on what they do with new laws, etc etc...

Terra and her group are going to be in stark opposition to Team RED about basically every possible thing - and she’s one of the most senior coven heads, too, so while some others might be more aligned with Kiki or Eberwolf + Raine + Darius, i can see several of the careerists who don’t have strong personal moral stakes here falling in behind her

Kiki and her faction are playing both sides against each other, sitting solidly in the middle - willing to bend on some things, willing to stick with tradition on others, courting both and committing to neither

and here’s poor Hunter, sixteen and newly traumatized, trained to be a soldier but never a politician, stuck in the middle

the sum total of his knowledge on the subject of how to rule (which is very different from how to lead in a military sense) is like

50% the false history from imperial propaganda, 25% actual history from forbidden/restricted texts

15% everything he absorbed watching and listening to Belos (Hunter probably believes in the divine right of kings, among other things) most of which is batshit Puritan beliefs filtered through the unique convolutions of Philip’s brain after several centuries in what he thinks is Literal Hell

and about 10% his own personal ideological positions he arrived at independently after synthesizing all of the above and forming opinions

politically and ideologically speaking he probably hews closest to Kikimora, of all people - yeah, he found out about the draining spell and that Belos was a fraud, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to denounce the entire religion or way of life he was raised in or the government and rules he sees as simply How Things Are because That’s How They’ve Always Been

Darius and Raine and Eberwolf’s ideas probably strike him as dangerously radical and impractical and very likely to lead to a ton of infighting and difficulty and headache

on the other hand, Kikimora has tried to murder him on at least one occasion, while Darius and Raine were both nice to him (by his incredibly low Intensely Abused Child standards), and Team RED are the ones assuring him they’re working to do away with the imperium entirely and get him off the throne and make it Someone Else’s Problem and boy does he not want any of this to be his problem any longer than necessary